40 Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075 Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

Half a century of Sri Lanka research: Subjects, researchers,

institutions, journals and impact (1973-2019)

Priyanga Ranasinghe1; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1522-9276

Julián Monge-Nájera2; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7764-2966

Chiranthi K. Liyanage1; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3362-4202

Yuh-Shan Ho3*; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2557-8736

1. Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka;

priyanga@pharm.cmb.ac.lk; chiranthiliayange@pharm.cmb.ac.lk

2. Vicerrectoría de Investigación, Universidad Estatal a Distancia, San José, Costa Rica; julianmonge@gmail.com

3. Trend Research Centre, Asia University, No. 500, Lioufeng Road, Wufeng, Taichung 41354, Taiwan;

ysho@asia.edu.tw (*Correspondence)

Received 15-VI-2021. Corrected 19-X-2021. Accepted 18-I-2022.

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Bibliometric analyses of research in Sri Lanka, a lower-middle income island nation in South

Asia, has focused mainly on medical research, concluding that there is a need for increased research productivity

and impact, and for local solutions to health concerns. There has been no general bibliometric analysis across

scientific disciplines in the nation, or any study that covers a long period of time to identify general time trends.

Objective: To measure and analyse Sri Lanka research by focusing on subjects, authors, institutions, journals

and citation for half a century.

Methods: We used an advanced search method to extract publications with the word “Sri Lanka” in the SCI-

EXPANDED, and calculated indicators such as total citations from Web of Science Core Collection since pub-

lication year to the end of 2019, citations in 2019, and mean citations per publication. Journal data were taken

from 2019 Journal Citation Report. Affiliation re-classification was done to ensure consistency regarding the

origin of all publications. Publications were further analysed based on collaboration, and first and correspond-

ing authorship.

Results: We retrieved 16 069 publications in 19 document types (77 % articles). Corrections had the highest

number of authors per publication (616) followed by articles (116). Four articles had more than 5 000 authors

and 593 articles had more than 1 000 authors. The highest citations in this database were for international mega-

projects where Sri Lanka authors played minor roles. The UK had the most collaborative articles with Sri Lanka

(19 %). The articles were published in 3 051 journals across 177 Web of Science categories. The category of

Public, environmental and occupational health, with 193 journals, had 6.7 % of all articles, followed by envi-

ronmental sciences (6.6 %).

Conclusion: Sri Lanka has an unusually strong pattern of participating as small role players in international

megaprojects about health and physics. Sri Lanka authors should be encouraged to expand their horizons by

researching non-applied fields that are the basis of all innovation; to strengthen their own journals so that they

have better visibility and impact, and to improve their positions in international projects that are published in

larger journals.

Key words: bibliometric analysis; scientometrics; Science Citation Index Expanded; productivity.

https://doi.org/10.15517/rev.biol.trop..v70i1.46065

OTHERS / SPECIAL ARTICLE

Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075, Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

Ever since Belgian librarian Paul Otlet

coined the term ‘bibliometrics’ in the 1930s, it

has grown in popularity as a research method

(Rousseau, 2014); it uses statistical methods

to measure the quantity, quality and impact of

books, articles, and other forms of scientific

publication (Durieux & Gevenois, 2010). Bib-

liometric indicators are often used as criteria

for funding, appointments, and promotions of

researchers (Durieux & Gevenois, 2010); and,

from a broader perspective, bibliometrics are

used to compare the scientific performance of

countries, journals, research specialities and

subject categories (Bah et al., 2019). Therefore,

bibliometrics are one technique for depicting

scientific research (Fu & Ho, 2013) and are part

of the criteria for decisions in the development

of science (Lucio-Arias & Leydesdorff, 2009).

On the other hand, studies based on bibliomet-

rics have been criticized because databases are

biased against researchers publishing in small

countries and languages other than English, for

example, 95 % of Vietnamese articles are miss-

ing from the Science Citation Index because

they are written in Vietnamese, and 78 % of

Cuban science is also missing because it is

published in Cuban journals that are not in that

database; it is unfair to say that all that science

missing from the Science Citation Index is not

of good quality or useful (Añino et al., 2021).

Previous bibliometric studies in this series

have evaluated the scientific publication out-

put, trends, research fields, and citations in

some databases across countries and conti-

nents, including for example Serbia (Ivanović

& Ho, 2014), Costa Rica (Monge-Nájera & Ho,

2012), and Taiwan (Chuang & Ho, 2015).

Sri Lanka is a lower-middle income island

country in South Asia, with a population of

nearly 22 million (Department of Census and

Statistics of Sri Lanka, 2020). Successive gov-

ernments since the turn of the 21st century

have instituted numerous schemes to promote

research and development, including increased

funding, support, and recognition in the form

of research awards, which are expected to

increase productivity and impact (Pratheepan

& Weerasooriya, 2016).

Even though there are scarce studies about

science in the country, it is known that many

factors affect the citation of Sri Lanka medical

research publications in the databases, including

novelty, topic, study design, language, journal

and collaborations (Annalingam et al., 2014).

The Science Citation Index fails to include

most Sri Lanka medical journals, of which only

one was indexed even in PubMed a decade ago

(Ranasinghe et al., 2011). At the time, around

60 % of the national research output in medi-

cine was published in non-indexed local jour-

nals (Ranasinghe et al., 2012). It is reasonable

to assume that authors from other scientific

disciplines in Sri Lanka also publish in local

non-indexed journals, limiting the accessibility

of local research publications to the interna-

tional readership. A suggested solution was

making journals accessible online (Ranasinghe

et al., 2011).

Sri Lanka suffers from a rising inci-

dence of both communicable diseases, such

as dengue, leptospirosis and tuberculosis; and

non-communicable diseases, such as diabe-

tes, cardiovascular disease and malignancies

(Gunawardene, 1999). In addition, injuries,

including road traffic accidents, are a major

cause of hospital admission and mortality

(Ranasinghe et al., 2012). The need to address

those local problems explains the dominance

of health-related research projects, but the Sri

Lanka research community needs to improve

both productivity and impact according to

Ranasinghe et al. (2012). It is likely that similar

concerns exist in other disciplines of science in

Sri Lanka.

The barriers and challenges to research

in this developing nation from the Indian sub-

continent are likely to be shared with neigh-

bouring countries with similar socio-economic

backgrounds, like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh

and Nepal. Therefore, our bibliometric evalua-

tion of research productivity in Sri Lanka can

help provide an insight in to the impact, pro-

ductivity and trends in scientific publications

in South Asia, home to nearly quarter of the

world’s population.

42 Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075 Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

There are so few studies of general science

in Sri Lanka, that there are no controversial

hypotheses or general trends that can be dis-

cussed, so we decided to establish, with this

report, a baseline of comprehensive data for

the country’s science. Our goal here it to assess

total scientific performance and impact; most

productive institutions and authors; favoured

journals, most productive subject categories,

and extent of national or international collabo-

ration. We basically report that Sri Lanka is not

different from other tropical countries, having a

limited scope of research fields and an undesir-

able dependence on foreign projects.

The main limitation of this study is that

it only considers data from the Science Cita-

tion Index (expanded version), which is highly

biased against countries outside North America

and Europe and fails to cover most Sri Lanka

publications which nevertheless must be read,

cited and generally important for the country

and nearby areas.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Data were generated from the Science

Citation Index Expanded online version, the

Web of Science Core Collection database,

and Clarivate Analytics. We used this, and not

another database, because it is very selective

and is the base with which we are familiar

and for which we have adjusted our long-term

research project. We used an advanced search

method to extract publications with the word

“Sri Lanka” in the country field, to search

for publications between 1973 and 2019. The

search was performed on 11 August 2020 by

one author (Y.S.H.). The SCI-EXPANDED

records and the number of citations in each

year per publication were coded manually in

Microsoft Excel (method details in Li & Ho,

2008). Data were checked by the local authors

(P.R. and C.K.L.) to remove incorrect and

duplicated data.

To explore the citation rate in a publica-

tion, indicators such as C2019, TC2019, and

CPP2019 (defined below) were used in the

present analysis. The number of citations in

the Web of Science Core Collection varies

with time. Hence, Ho’s group proposed TCyear

(Chuang et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2011), total

number of citations in the Web of Science Core

Collection since publication year to the end

of the most recent year, for example 2019 in

this study (TC2019). This indicator makes total

citations a constant, which can be repeated and

checked (Ho & Fu, 2016). Hence, TC2019 was

defined as the total number of citations since

publication by the end of 2019. Citations per

publication (CPP2019) was defined as total cita-

tions (TC2019) per number of total publications

(TP) (CPP2019 = TC2019/TP). In addition, C2019,

the total number of citations only in 2019, was

also evaluated. This measures the influence of

an article in the current year (Ho, 2012). The

advantage of using TCyear and Cyear is that they

ensure the repeatability of results compared

to the use of index of citation directly from

the Web of Science Core Collection (Fu et al.,

2012). Furthermore, it has also been pointed

out that it may not be appropriate to use a single

indicator to evaluate the impact of an article

(Ho & Hartley, 2016). For example, research-

ers should pay more attention to articles with

a high Cyear and not only to those with high

TCyear alone, because some highly cited articles

of the past with a high TCyear may not have had

the same high impact in the recent years (Ho &

Hartley, 2016).

The impact factors (IF2019) of the journals

were taken from the Journal Citation Reports

(JCR) which was published in 2019. Affiliation

re-classification was done as described below

to ensure consistency regarding the origin of all

publications, as per recommended standards.

Affiliations in England, Scotland, Northern

Ireland, Wales, and Anguilla were reclassified

as being from the United Kingdom (UK) (Chiu

& Ho, 2005). Affiliations in Faroe Islands were

reclassified as being from Denmark. Affili-

ations in French Guiana were reclassified as

being from France. Affiliations in Hong Kong

was reclassified to be in China (Fu et al.,

2012). Affiliations in Fed Rep Ger (Federal

Republic of Germany) were reclassified to be

in Germany. Affiliations in Yemen Peo Dem R

Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075, Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

(Democratic Republic of Yemen) were reclas-

sified to be in Yemen. Affiliations in Czecho-

slovakia were checked and reclassified to be in

Czech Republic (Lin & Ho, 2015). Affiliations

in Senegambia were checked and reclassified

to be in Gambia. Affiliations in USSR and Rep

of Georgia were checked and reclassified to be

in Georgia (Republic of Georgia). In addition,

Affiliations in Austl. were reclassified to be in

Australia. Similarly, Czechoslovak Acad Sci

(Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences) were

checked and reclassified as being the Czech

Acad Sci (Czech Republic Academy of Sci-

ences). A potential bias in analysis of institu-

tions occur when authors use different spellings

for the same institution. Therefore, we merged

these institutions during analysis (Fu et al.,

2014). For example, Peradeniya Univ, Univ

Peradeniya, Univ Peradeniya & Sri Lanka,

Univ Peradeniya Kandy, Univ Peradeniya Sri

Lanka, Univ Peradeniyai; articles published

under these institutional names were merged

together under the University of Peradeniya.

Publications were further analysed based

on collaboration, first, and corresponding

authorship. Ten types based on the above were

evaluated including (Monge-Nájera & Ho,

2017a; Monge-Nájera et al., 2020) ; a) NFR:

both first and corresponding authors are not

from Sri Lanka, b) NR: corresponding author

is not from Sri Lanka, c) NF: first author is

not from Sri Lanka, d) IC: international col-

laboration, e) NC: national collaboration, f) II:

institutional independent (single institutional

articles), g) CI: Sri Lanka independent (only

Sri Lanka authors), h) FP: first author is from

Sri Lanka, i) RP: corresponding author is

from Sri Lanka, and j) FR: both first and cor-

responding authors are from Sri Lanka. In the

SCI-EXPANDED database, the corresponding

author is labelled as reprint author, but in this

study, we used the term corresponding author.

Similarly, in a single institutional article, the

institution was classified as the first as well

as the corresponding author institution (Ho,

2014). Furthermore, in a single-author article

where authorship is unspecified, the author was

considered as both the first and corresponding

author (Ho, 2014). Collaboration was evalu-

ated by the affiliations of the authors in a

publication, where ‘internationally collabora-

tive articles’ were those articles co-authored by

researchers from different countries other than

Sri Lanka, while articles labelled ‘national col-

laborative article’ were those with authors from

diverse institutions within Sri Lanka.

RESULTS

Document type, language, year of publi-

cation and citation impact: A total of 16 069

publications with at least one author from Sri

Lanka in SCI-EXPANDED was found within

19 document types (Appendix 1). The most

common document type was articles (N = 12

298; 77 %) followed by the meeting abstracts

(N = 2 025; 13 %). The 2 025 meeting abstracts

were published in 253 journals, with the top

three being Journal of Gastroenterology and

Hepatology (N = 161; 8.0 %), Vox Sanguinis

(N = 120; 5.9 %), and BJOG-An International

Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (N =

104; 5.1 %). Reviews had 1.7 times more cita-

tions per publication (CPP2019) than articles

(Appendix 1). Three reviews had a TC2019 of

more than 1 000 including the review titled

“The CMS experiment at the CERN LHC”

(CMS Collaboration, 2008) (TC2019 = 2 839),

followed by “The ecological limits of hydro-

logic alteration (ELOHA): A new framework

for developing regional environmental flow

standards” (Poff et al., 2010) (TC2019 = 1 287);

and “Biochar as a sorbent for contaminant

management in soil and water: A review”

(Ahmad et al., 2014) (TC2019 = 1 205).

Corrections had the highest number of

authors per publication (APP) of 616 followed

by articles with an APP of 116 (Appendix 1).

Four articles had more than 5 000 authors;

with the article titled “Combinations of single-

top-quark production cross-section measure-

ments and vertical bar |fLVVtb|determinations

at = 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS

experiments” (Aaboud et al., 2019) having the

highest number of authors (N = 5 213 authors).

Other large group collaborative publications

44 Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075 Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

with more than 5 000 authors were “Combined

measurement of the higgs boson mass in pp

collisions at √s = 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS

and CMS Experiments” (Aad et al., 2015)

(N = 5 154 authors); “Measurements of the

Higgs boson production and decay rates and

constraints on its couplings from a combined

ATLAS and CMS analysis of the LHC pp col-

lision data at = 7 and 8 TeV” (Aad et al., 2016)

(N = 5 111 authors); and “Combination of

inclusive and differential t charge asymmetry

measurements using ATLAS and CMS data

at = 7 and 8 TeV” (Aaboud et al., 2018) (N =

5 098 authors). Furthermore, 593 articles had

more than 1 000 authors, and these were mainly

published in the following journals; Journal of

High Energy Physics (N = 184 articles; 31 %

of 593 articles), Physics Letters B (N = 136;

23 %), European Physical Journal C (N = 93;

16 %), Physical Review D (N = 79; 13 %), and

Physical Review Letters (N = 56; 9.4 %).

Only articles were considered for fur-

ther analysis because they included complete

research reports with methods, results, discus-

sions, and conclusions. Almost all articles that

reached this particular database (99.9 % of 12

298 articles) were published in English. The

remaining non-English articles were published

in German (N = 5), French (N = 2), Spanish (N

= 2), and Dutch (N = 1).

The earliest article with a Sri Lanka author

in SCI-EXPANDED was published in 1973

(Fig. 1). From 1973 to 2002, less than 200

articles were included each year. A gradual

increase is seen from 1973 with 51 articles to

2002 with 191 articles, followed by a sharp

increase after 2002. The highest CPP2019 of 42

was in 2012, which can be attributed to three

“classic” articles by Murray et al. (2012) with

TC2019 of 4 568, Vos et al. (2012) with TC2019

of 3 624, and Lozano et al. (2012) with TC2019

of 2 854 (here, articles with a TCyear of 1 000

Fig. 1. Trends of articles and citations per publication from 1973 to 2019.

Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075, Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

or more are labelled “classic articles” following

Long et al., 2014).

Collaboration patterns: countries and

institutions: Internationally collaborative arti-

cles (IC) received higher citations per publi-

cation (CPP2019), than national independent

articles (II), or national collaborative articles

(NC) (Fig. 2). Furthermore, articles with a

first author and/or corresponding author from

other countries tend to receive much higher

CPP2019 than those with a first author and/or

corresponding author from Sri Lanka institu-

tions (Fig. 2). There were 38 % of independent

articles and 62 % of articles produced in col-

laboration with 188 countries; 56 % had a first

or a corresponding author from Sri Lanka.

The UK was part of 19 % of collaborative

articles, while the USA had the most first author

articles (6.9 %) and corresponding author

articles (6.4 %) (Appendix 2). Articles with

Switzerland as first-author and corresponding

author country had the highest CPP2019 (78 and

84 citations, respectively).

Leading institutions and authors: In

total, 3 076 (25 % of 12 298 articles) were single

institution articles (II). There were 75 % inter-

institutionally collaborative articles, including

17 % nationally collaborative articles (NC) and

83 % internationally collaborative articles (IC).

The University of Peradeniya took the lead-

ing position for six publication indicators with

3 248 articles (26 %) which included: 727 insti-

tution independent articles, 2 004 inter-institu-

tionally collaborative articles, 1 534 first author

articles), 1 498 corresponding author articles),

and 194 single-author articles (Appendix 3).

The University of Colombo had the high-

est number of nationally collaborative articles

Fig. 2. Citations per publication and number of articles by type of collaboration and authorship. TP: total articles, NFR:

both first- and corresponding-authors are not from Sri Lanka, NR: corresponding-author is not from Sri Lanka, NF: first-

author is not from Sri Lanka, IC: international collaboration, NC: national collaboration, II: institutional independent, CI:

Sri Lanka independent, FP: first-author is from Sri Lanka, RP: corresponding-author is from Sri Lanka, FR: both first- and

corresponding-authors are from Sri Lanka.

46 Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075 Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

(559). However, the International Water Man-

agement Institute had the highest CPP2019 val-

ues: 44, 46, and 68 for their first author (FP),

corresponding author (RP), and single author

(SP) articles, respectively (Appendix 3).

A total of 4 673 independent Sri Lanka

articles (i.e. articles without any internation-

al collaborations) were published by 6 317

authors including 2 382 first authors, 1 760

corresponding authors, and 477 single authors.

Considering non-internationally collaborative

articles, K. Tennakone from the National Insti-

tute of Fundamental Studies was the most

productive author with 154 articles (3.3 % of 4

673 articles), including 131 FP articles, 142 RP

articles, and 31 SP articles (Appendix 4). Out

of the FP articles, those by E.H. Karunanayake

from University of Colombo had the highest

CPP2019 (90). N. Senanayake from University

of Peradeniya had the highest CPP2019 of 40

from among the RP articles. Single author arti-

cles by S.A.M. Kularatne from the University

of Peradeniya had the highest CPP2019 (77).

Journals and subject categories: The

12 298 articles were published in 3 051 jour-

nals across 177 Web of Science categories in

SCI-EXPANDED (there were no articles in the

category of logic). Among these, 1 415 journals

(46 % of 3 051 journals) contained only one

article; 19 % two, and 9.1 % three articles.

Sri Lanka published the most articles in

the Journal of the National Science Foundation

of Sri Lanka (IF2019 = 0.378) with 389 articles

(3.2 % of 12 298 articles), followed by Journal

of High Energy Physics (IF2019 = 5.875) with

185 articles, Physics Letters B (IF2019 = 4.384)

with 140; and PLoS One (IF2019 = 2.740) with

132 articles. A total of 185 articles published

in the Journal of High Energy Physics had the

highest number of authors per article (APP)

with 2 276 authors, followed by the Journal

of Instrumentation (15 articles; APP = 2 268),

European Physical Journal C (95 articles; APP

= 2 198), Physical Review Letters (59 articles;

APP = 2 177) and Physics Letters B (140

articles; APP = 2 175).

Articles published in BioScience (IF2019 =

8.282) had the highest number of citations per

publication (CPP2019 = 1 339), from the “clas-

sic” article “Marine ecoregions of the world: A

bioregionalization of coastal and shelf areas”

(Spalding et al., 2007) with a TC2019 of 1 339.

This is followed by JAMA Oncology with

IF2019 of 24.799 (2 articles; CPP2019 = 728),

Trends in Parasitology with IF2019 of 6.918

(1 article; CPP2019 = 609), and Lancet with

IF2019 of 60.392 (66 articles; CPP2019 = 604).

New England Journal of Medicine (IF2019 =

74.699) published the 10 articles with the high-

est IF2019. Sri Lanka also published articles in

other high impact journals, such as the Lancet

(IF2019 = 60.392; 66 articles).

The category of public, environmental

and occupational health, with 193 journals,

published the most Sri Lanka articles (829

articles; 6.7 % of 12 298 articles) followed by

the environmental sciences (814), and multidis-

ciplinary sciences (725) (Appendix 5). In 2019,

the categories Environmental sciences (TP =

814, rank 2nd), Multidisciplinary sciences (TP

= 725, rank 3rd), Particles and fields physics

(TP = 513, rank 8th), and Public, environmen-

tal and occupational health (TP = 829, rank

1st) were the top four productive categories

(Appendix 6).

Most cited articles: The “classic” or most

cited articles in this database are detailed in

Appendix 7, Appendix 8 and Appendix 9; of

these, 12 were published in the 2010s and only

two in the 2000s. All resulted from smaller Sri

Lanka collaborations within large international

projects with 2 to 89 participating countries,

and Sri Lanka scientists were not first or cor-

responding authors. Eleven of these articles

were published in Lancet, and one each in

BioScience, New England Journal of Medicine,

Climate Research, and JAMA Oncology.

The earliest classic article was published

in 2002 by authors from University of Oxford

and University of East Anglia in the UK, and

the International Water Management Institute

in Sri Lanka, it had a TC2019 of 1 445 (rank

9th) and C2019 of 76 (rank 50th). Nine classic

Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075, Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

articles ranked among the top 15 in both TC2019

and C2019. In addition, 12 of the 15 classic

articles dealt with general and internal medi-

cine, while one article each was published in

oncology, biology, environmental sciences, and

meteorology and atmospheric sciences. Cita-

tion histories for the top classic articles appear

in Appendix 7 and Appendix 8.

DISCUSSION

In this first comprehensive bibliometric

analysis of Sri Lanka scientific research pub-

lications in SCI-EXPANDED, we describe the

country’s overall research productivity and

impact, whilst identifying the most productive

research institutions and authors. Furthermore,

our results show the importance of collab-

orative research, especially in international

mega-projects, to produce high impact values

in this database.

Most Sri Lanka publications in the data-

base were full paper articles, which is consis-

tent with findings from other countries, such

as Costa Rica (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2012),

Ghana (Boamah & Ho, 2018) and Brunei

(Ho et al., 2018). Article dominance generally

reflects the fact that authors are encouraged by

their institutions to publish them, as opposed

to comments, letters, and book reviews, this

is done with incentives for career advance and

direct, or indirect, financial benefits (Boamah

& Ho, 2018). The focus on articles, in turn,

may represent a bias because it means that

trends affecting other types of publications can-

not be identified by our analysis.

The second commonest document type was

meeting abstracts, in a proportion that is higher

in Sri Lanka than what in Costa Rica (Monge-

Nájera & Ho, 2012) and Brunei (5.9 %) (Ho et

al., 2018), for example, although it is similar to

the proportion found in the African country of

Ghana (Boamah & Ho, 2018). However, when

research is presented as a conference abstract,

it does not provide a complete representation of

the research methods and findings, and is not

fully peer-reviewed. Therefore, authors should

receive incentives and support to later publish

their meeting abstracts as full articles (we do

not have data on the percentage of abstracts

subsequently published as articles).

Sri Lanka’s articles included in the SCI-

EXPANDED were mostly in English, similar

to other countries around the world (Bah et al.,

2019; Boamah & Ho, 2018; Ho et al., 2018;

Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2012). On the island,

most people speak Sinhalese or Tamil (Depart-

ment of Census and Statistics of Sri Lanka,

2020), but, while English is understood by a

quarter of the population, the database lan-

guage bias could hinder academic publishing

in Sri Lanka and similar countries, because of

a “linguistic injustice” where non-native speak-

ers of English face substantial challenges in

the dissemination of scholarly work (Politzer-

Ahles et al., 2016).

Sri Lanka was formerly known as Ceylon

and only became a republic, adopting its cur-

rent name in 1972, at the time that we find the

earliest article with a Sri Lanka author in the

SCI-EXPANDED. From that time onwards,

there was only a modest increase until 2002

until reaching a rapid upsurge since 2010.

The reasons for this increase are likely to be

multifactorial: government policies (Prathee-

pan & Weerasooriya, 2016) as well as an in

the interest of the database itself in covering

“third world” countries when growth stopped

in industrialized nations.

In recent years, Ho’s group proposed a

relationship between country publication types

(based on collaboration and authorship status)

and their citations per publication, to evaluate

their impact (Chuang & Ho, 2015). The results

show that internationally collaborative articles

from Sri Lanka received a higher CPP2019,

than institutionally independent or nationally

collaborative articles; and this reflects the fact

that local projects have much smaller budgets

and do not have access to the journals of coun-

tries that are better covered by the database we

used. Furthermore, articles with a first author

and/or corresponding author from other coun-

tries received a much higher CPP2019 for the

same reason.

Similar results have been observed when

the same analysis has been applied to other

48 Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075 Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

developing countries, such as Benin (Monge-

Nájera et al., 2020), Brunei (Ho et al., 2018),

Ecuador (Calahorrano et al., 2020), Hondu-

ras (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017a), El Salva-

dor (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017b), Ghana

(Boamah & Ho, 2018), Guatemala (Monge-

Nájera & Ho, 2018), and Nicaragua (Monge-

Nájera & Ho, 2017c).

Well financed international collabora-

tive projects (1) enable the sharing of new

techniques, skills, knowledge and high-end

facilities, synergising expertise and producing

articles with many authors and wider exposure

in large journals, and (2) often study pressing

health issues, therefore they are more likely to

have more citations and should be encouraged

when done on a fair basis (Glänzel, 2001; Khor

& Yu, 2016). Conversely, the lowest impact of

local authors in this particular database indi-

cates smaller resources and insufficient cover-

age in this database of journals published in

Asia and other less industrialized regions.

Our results also show that publications

from Sri Lanka had a higher CPP2019 than

countries with similar socio-economic status,

such as Guatemala (Monge-Nájera & Ho,

2018), Benin (Monge-Nájera et al., 2020),

Ecuador (Calahorrano et al., 2020), Ghana

(Boamah & Ho, 2018), El Salvador (Monge-

Nájera & Ho, 2017b), and Brunei (Ho et al.,

2018). Possible reasons include a larger pres-

ence of Sri Lanka in international megaprojects

or more coverage of Asia, over Latin America,

in this database (Smith et al., 2014). Addition-

ally, factors affected citation in this database

include a) article related factors: quality, nov-

elty, subject area, study topic and study design,

b) journal related factors: language, scope and

form of publication, and c) author related fac-

tors: number, reputation, collaborations and

country (Tahamtan et al., 2016). Most of those

factors have been also identified in Sri Lanka

medical research (Annalingam et al., 2014),

and might affect the trend found here. Further-

more, the SCI-EXPANDED has a poor cover-

age of Sri Lanka journals, and most authors

published articles in the Journal of the National

Science Foundation of Sri Lanka (Ranasinghe

et al., 2011; Ranasinghe et al., 2012).

We found that, in Sri Lanka, public uni-

versities were the most prolific institutions,

and this was similar to what has been found

in other developing countries, including Cam-

eroon (Tchuifon Tchuifon et al., 2017), Costa

Rica (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2012), El Salvador

(Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017b) and Nicaragua

(Monge-Nájera, & Ho, 2017a). Universities

by definition are expected to be institutions

of higher learning providing facilities for both

teaching and research, where academic schol-

ars/researchers receive recognition, promotion

and funding for future research through their

publications (Pratheepan & Weerasooriya,

2016). Hence, it is not surprising that Sri Lanka

universities are in the forefront of research

publications in the country. Even in developed

countries like Germany, the world’s third larg-

est producer of scientific research, universities

have consistently produced two-thirds of the

publications in the highest quality journals

(Dusdal et al., 2020).

A relationship of percentage of publica-

tions in a country and number of journals in

each Web of Science category has been pro-

posed (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017a; Monge-

Nájera & Ho, 2017c), and when we applied it

to Sri Lanka, we found that the island published

most articles in the category of public, environ-

mental and occupational health. This was simi-

lar to Honduras (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017a),

El Salvador (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017b),

and Nicaragua (Monge-Nájera & Ho, 2017c)

in Central America; and Ghana (Boamah &

Ho, 2018) in Africa. However, Brunei (Ho et

al., 2018) in Asia published the most articles

in the category of ecology, showing another

trend which is the emphasis on conservation

in countries where basic health issues have

been controlled to some extent. In the case of

Sri Lanka, the health situation (Gunawardene,

1999; Ranasinghe et al., 2012) explains why

research efforts are concentrated in health, an

area of national priority.

In conclusion, Sri Lanka authors publish

mainly in the area of public, environmental and

occupational health, reflecting the priorities of

the country. The impact of Sri Lanka research

articles is highest when published as part

Revista de Biología Tropical, ISSN: 2215-2075, Vol. 70: 40-52, January-December 2022 (Published Jan. 27, 2022)

of international collaborative project where,

unfortunately, they only play a secondary role

and the leaders are well-funded researchers

from large industrialized countries. Sri Lanka

policy makers must find a balance between the

two options of focusing support on the most

prolific authors and institutions identified in

this study; or focusing on emerging research-

ers and institutions that are less likely to

obtain foreign funds. Sri Lanka authors should

be encouraged to (1) expand their horizons

beyond short-term goals, i.e. researching non-

applied fields that are the basis of all innova-

tion; (2) to strengthen their own journals so that

they have better visibility and impact, and (3)

to additionally publish more in large interna-

tional journals as part of teams where they are

also among the leaders instead of just accepting

secondary roles.

Ethical statement: the authors declare

that they all agree with this publication and

made significant contributions; that there is no

conflict of interest of any kind; and that we fol-

lowed all pertinent ethical and legal procedures

and requirements. All financial sources are

fully and clearly stated in the acknowledge-

ments section. A signed document has been

filed in the journal archives.

See Digital Appendix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Carolina Seas for her valuable

assistance with manuscript preparation.

RESUMEN

Medio siglo de investigación en Sri Lanka: temas,

investigadores, instituciones, revistas e impacto

(1973-2019)

Introducción: Los análisis bibliométricos de la inves-

tigación en Sri Lanka, una nación insular de ingresos

mediano-bajos en el sur de Asia, se han centrado principal-

mente en la investigación médica, concluyendo que existe

la necesidad de aumentar la productividad y el impacto de

la investigación, y de soluciones locales a los problemas de

salud. No ha habido un análisis bibliométrico general de

disciplinas científicas o algún estudio que cubra un período

largo de tiempo para identificar tendencias generales.

Objetivo: Medir y analizar la investigación de Sri Lanka

centrándose en temas, autores, instituciones, revistas y

citas, durante medio siglo.

Métodos: Utilizamos un método de búsqueda avanzada

para extraer publicaciones con las palabras “Sri Lanka”

en el SCI-EXPANDED, y calculamos indicadores como

el total de citas de Web of Science Core Collection desde

el año de publicación hasta finales de 2019, citas solo

en 2019, y media de citas por publicación. Los datos de

revistas son del Journal Citation Report 2019. Revisamos

manualmente las afiliaciones para garantizar su coherencia,

y, de todos los tipos de publicación, analizamos en detalle

los artículos en función de la colaboración y la autoría.

Resultados: Hallamos 16 069 publicaciones en 19 tipos de

documentos (77 % artículos). Las correcciones tuvieron el

mayor número de autores por publicación (616), seguidas

de los artículos (116 autores en promedio); cuatro artículos

tenían más de 5 000 autores y 593 artículos tenían más de

1 000 autores. Las citas más altas en esta base de datos

fueron para megaproyectos internacionales en los que

los autores de Sri Lanka desempeñaron papeles menores.

El Reino Unido tuvo más artículos colaborativos con Sri

Lanka (19 %). Los artículos se publicaron en 3 051 revis-

tas de 177 categorías del Web of Science. La categoría d

Salud pública, ambiental y ocupacional, con 193 revistas,

tuvo el 6.7 % del total de artículos, seguida de Ciencias

ambientales (6.6 %).

Conclusión: En Sri Lanka hay una tendencia inusual a

participar como pequeños actores en megaproyectos inter-

nacionales sobre salud y física. Debería alentarse a quienes

hacen ciencia en Sri Lanka a ampliar sus horizontes inves-

tigando campos no aplicados, que son la base de la inno-

vación; a fortalecer sus propias revistas para lograr mayor

visibilidad e impacto, y a mejorar su ubicación en proyec-

tos internacionales que se publican en revistas más grandes.

Palabras clave: análisis bibliométrico; cienciometría;

Science Citation Index Expanded; productividad.

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